This course provides staff in the electricity industry, governance bodies, regulators, and vendors the basic understanding, concepts and challenges associated with ancillary services (AS) design. The AS may be cost based or market based. The course gives specific emphasis of market based AS along with the design of markets for AS. The course begins with a short review of electricity industry structure and operation, including a summary of implementation in India, US and UK, trends in electricity industry technology and a discussion of the implications of the increasing deployment of converter-interfaced devices.

This is followed by a summary of current international practice in the provision of ancillary services. This provides a basis for discussing strengths and weaknesses of current ancillary service arrangements in the light of increasing penetration of converter-interfaced devices, including wind and PV generation, reversible storage and flexible demand. The final session of the course will discuss recent developments in ancillary service design and implementation as well as future trends, with a particular focus on the National Electricity Market.